Al-Jazeera Speaks to Ex-SD Imam

Excerpts of Al-Jazeera interview with Anwar Awlaki on Feb. 2, 2010. Translated and released by NEFA Foundation. Awlaki lived in San Diego in the 1990s.

Q. What is the truth about you meeting with Omar Farooq [the suspect in the attempted Christmas Day airline bombing] or that you announced a Fatwa about the legitimacy of the operation?A. The mujahid brother Omar al-Farooq—may Allah release him—is one of my students; yes, we were in correspondence, but I did not give Omar Farooq a Fatwa in regards to this operation.

Q. You envision him as a mujahid; meaning, do you back him up?

A. I support what Omar Farooq has done after I witnessed my brothers in Palestine for more than 60 years being killed, and in Iraq they are being killed, and in Afghanistan they are being killed, and the American missiles and raids killed 17 women and 23 children in my tribe; thus, don’t ask me whether al-Qaeda killed, or if it bombed an American civil jet after all of that, as three hundred Americans are nothing before the thousands of Muslims they killed.

Q. You supported [alleged Fort Hood shooter] Nidal Hasan and you justified it that the target is military and not civic. In regards to the jet [incident] of Omar Farooq it is a civic jet; meaning, the targets are the American public?

A. If the jet was military or the target was for the American army, it would be better. And, al-Qaeda Organization has its choices, and in regards to the public, the American populace is living within a democratic regime and they hold the responsibility of its policies; the American populace elected the criminal Bush for two presidential runs, and they elected Obama who’s not different from Bush, and one of his first declarations were that he will not abandon Israel despite that there were other candidates in the American elections who oppose the foreign American wars and those only received low percentages of the total votes. The American populace is a participant in all the crimes of their government, but if they weren’t supportive of that then they should change their government; they are the ones who pay taxes that are being spent on the army and they are who send their children to the army; they carry the responsibility.

Q. Do you believe that the Yemeni Government is facilitating your assassination?

A. The Yemeni government sells its own citizens to America in order to eat bloody money it received from the west, with their blood. The Yemeni officials say to the Americans: attack whatever you desire but do not adopt the actions thereof in order to not have people revolt against us, and with total impertinence the Yemeni government adopts it. For example, the Cruise Missiles were seen by the people in the region in Shabwa and Abeen and Arhab, and the some of the Cluster Bombs remained undetonated and people saw them. The state is lying in its claims, and the state adopted the operation in order to refute the accusation of being a cooperative. The American surveillance jets always revolve in the Yemeni sphere; so what is this country that allows its enemy to eavesdrop on its people and invade their privacies, then considers this cooperation accepted?